John Malkovich brings serial killer Jack Unterweger back to life

"The very first time John Malkovich set eyes on Jack Unterweger, it was in the early 1990s and the celebrity model of rehabilitation was being interviewed on a television chat show.

"I have a memory of his creamy-ish white suit, a black and white polka-dot polyester stretch shirt, loafers and gold chains – convict paraphernalia," the actor recalled.

Unterweger was talking about his prison past – he had been convicted of murdering a woman in 1976 – and his subsequent rehabilitation into Austrian society by the Viennese cafe intellectuals who campaigned for his early release, leading to a pardon from the president at the time, Kurt Waldheim.

"At the time I didn't get it, I wondered why people believed in someone who was so obviously fake, so obviously lying," said Malkovich in an exclusive interview with the Guardian. "Only years later did the real story come out."

The real story, which Malkovich will bring to a Vienna stage in an opera-chamber theatre production which premieres tonight, was that Unterweger, the reformed prisoner turned celebrated poet and journalist, had begun a brutal killing spree within six months of his release.

"When I saw him he was well into the planning stages. He committed three murders in the first year he was out," said Malkovich.

Between 1990 and 1993 Unterweger murdered 11 prostitutes in Vienna, Prague and Los Angeles, strangling them with a self-styled ligature constructed from his victims' bra straps.

At the same time his books – including his celebrated autobiography Purgatory – were being taught in schools, his children's stories were performed on the radio and as a journalist for the state broadcaster, he was reporting on the very crime wave for which he was responsible. He was even sent by an Austrian magazine to Los Angeles to write a comparable reportage piece on the situation there.

"He came to write about the terrible conditions American prostitutes have because they don't have a union at all," said Malkovich, who plays Unterweger in The Infernal Comedy: Confessions of a Serial Killer. "But of course, he didn't necessarily improve their conditions because, you know, he killed them all after he'd interviewed them.

"But he got what he wanted – a free trip to California to kill some hookers and make himself a little more famous and known and thoughtful."

[Unterweger] took his life the night after he was convicted of nine murders by a Graz court.

Malkovich, who is used to playing film characters that are menacing and alluring, said he found Unterweger "haunting and tragic. I can find him so touching that I can't even talk when I get on stage," he said.

Describing The Infernal Comedy as a "lesson in being careful about what you wish for", Malkovich added: "It is a cautionary tale about where our projected fantasies of redemption hurl themselves, out into the night, not knowing if the ground is 10 inches below or 200 storeys. I'd be shocked if those who supported him haven't shown some remorse.""